Mr M Haque v Royal Mail Group Limited Heard: in Leeds — 2024

Mr M Haque brought complaints of discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or belief, and disability against Royal Mail Group Ltd. At a preliminary hearing on 15 February 2024 he withdrew the race and religion complaints, and the tribunal dismissed those claims. The only claim heard at the final hearing was a section 15 Equality Act 2010 complaint that Royal Mail discriminated against him because of something arising in consequence of his disability, with the respondent having conceded that he was disabled by back pain and knew of that disability.

Applying section 15 and the approach in Secretary of State for Justice v Dunn and Pnaiser v NHS England, the tribunal found that on 1 June 2023 Mr Lloyd implicitly threatened to cancel the claimant's overtime if there was no work he could do, and that Mr Joshi told him he would need to be ready to do any job during overtime. Those comments were treated as unfavourable because they could have led to loss of the overtime shift and pay. However, the tribunal found that the comments were made because the claimant was refusing or reluctant to work on the wing of the Caljan machine, not because of the pleaded something arising from disability, namely an inability and/or refusal to do bag tipping.

The tribunal therefore dismissed the section 15 claim at the causation stage. It also said that, if it had needed to decide justification, Royal Mail had a legitimate aim in ensuring adequate staffing to meet its universal service obligation, and the comments would have been a proportionate means of achieving that aim. In reaching that view it relied on the evidence that overtime work is allocated on an as-needed basis, the claimant finished the shift in bag tipping after alternative work was found, and he suffered no loss of pay or loss of future overtime as a result.